How do you format an appellate brief?

A:

Quick Answer

You can find a free online guide for formatting an appellate brief, for both PC and Mac users, on the website of the University of Montana, notes the university. Its guide details step-by-step instructions on how to create a cover page, prepare the document and create a table of contents and a table of authorities.

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Before starting, the University of Montana's website suggests that users delay formatting until after creating both the table of contents and the table of authorities. It also suggests turning on paragraph markers within the text and saving a clean copy of the brief.

For preparing the document, the site recommends the following three steps: create a page before the main body of the brief, divide the brief into sections and paginate the brief.

For creating a table of contents, the site recommends the following two steps: apply heading styles and levels to the table of contents items and generate and insert the table of contents into the document.

For creating a table of authorities, the site recommends the following two steps: mark the authorities in the document and generate and insert the table of authorities into the document.

For creating a cover page, the site recommends making it in a separate document and inserting it into the main document.